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From BI perspective the products we use are
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Business objects
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Crystal reports.
We have our own data warehouse application and
inventory tools. Various applications use databases to
store operational data. Data from these databases are
extracted and transferred into the data warehouse
records on a regular basis. BI tools go into these
databases, for example Oracle application databases
primarily, extract data and create respective
universes. In an insurance company we have large
volume of customer data in terms of millions and
millions of records. These customer data are related
to customer information that need to be processed as
part of the company operation. We create a universe
with customer data. Similarly we have policy related
information. We extract policy data and create a
policy related universe. BI tools generally create
universe and generate reports out of this with the
help of a User Interface. Current problem with BI
tools of today is that these are mostly oriented
towards post analytical reporting and not towards real
time reporting.
All State Insurance
Company in Illinois, for example, has business needs
for
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Operational reporting
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Analytical reporting
There is an immediate
need for us in the organization to get operational
information as it happens in real time, such as
whenever an insurance policy is sold. We need to know
when it was sold and how we performed, how many
policies were sold in a day, etc. These are critical
information for marketing department. Reports are
usually created in 24 hours, a week or a month with
the current BI tools. This does not meet our needs.
We are planning to procure a suitable tool for
operational reporting. We are looking at a product
called Visual Sciences.
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PROFILE
Jijo Joseph is the lead architect having the
responsibility of evaluating the product from an
architect’s point of view. Similarly there are
representatives from business side, Infrastructure
service, Operations, etc. We do preliminary
evaluations first without even touching the product.
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